The numbers are in from multiple sources and it is clear that John McCain got flattened tonight like a bug on a windshield. And the pain is only beginning because McCain produced at least three damaging clips that will be replayed in a loop for the next three days. He insulted the intelligence of a questioner (and the nation) by suggesting that no one knew who Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were until last month. He referred to Obama dismissively at ‘That one’, and he refused to shake Obama’s hand after the debate.
All of those incidents reinforce McCain’s crippling image as an an angry, arrogant, dismissive, old bastard. McCain was crushed in the debate but he will be steamrolled into oblivion by the post-debate coverage. It used to be that the press loved John McCain and gave him every benefit of the doubt. But then McCain picked an unqualified beauty pageant contestant as his running mate and had to hide her from the press. In fact, to justify his hiding of the beauty pageant contestant, he used the Republican National Convention to literally declare war on his base…the national political press.
Once he did that, he was toast. McCain started out in the hole, as a member of a political party that is only slightly more popular than a case of chlamydia. He didn’t have the support of the political base of that party. Once he declared war on his bestest buddies on the Georgetown cocktail circuit, he had no friends left and no one to give him the benefit of the doubt.
McCain doesn’t have an argument or the political skills to compete with Obama. His running mate is an international punch-line. The opportunities to change the tenor of this race are diminishing rapidly, along with McCain’s plausibility as our next president. I expect to see further erosion in the Republicans’ prospects in all races, and in all areas of the country.
